


do you no harm

by takingyournarrative



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff and Angst, Gerry is a noble, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kissing, M/M, Mary Keay's A+ Parenting, Michael is a thief, but more importantly Tender Orange Peeling, consensual thievery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28994565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takingyournarrative/pseuds/takingyournarrative
Summary: “And… this?” In a stride, Michael was nearly pressed against him, warm enough to be a relief in the cold of the drafty room. His fingers were playing with Gerry’s cravat, long and elegant, tracing the knot with almost practiced precision.For all Gerry’s stillness, he tilted his chin up just a fraction, and when he met Michael’s eyes the boy was smirking. “Are you … trying to seduce me?” asked Gerry.in which Gerry is sweetly divested of his money and his clothes, but not like that.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley
Comments: 22
Kudos: 64





	do you no harm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hypnoshatesme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypnoshatesme/gifts).



> Me: haha yeah so when I was a child I used to pretend to be a thief who would ask for consent to steal things :')  
> Adrian: ...you could make a gerrymichael au out of that
> 
> (speaking of which, go read The Price For Freedom by hypnoshatesme)
> 
> title from 'the little beggar girl' by richard and linda thompson

The Von Closen house hovered dark on a hill, spindly and distant and watching the city. It was old enough to have fallen into disrepair by now — really, it should have with nobody to work on it, nobody even allowed within the square quarter-mile encircled by its gates. The lady did not keep servants; she festered with her nobility in every other way, but the house was empty save for her and her son, and he was gone often enough.

He left. Fled, when he could, from the high walls of the manor to the streets below, wrapped neck to ankle in expensive silk. A target for muggers and thieves, perhaps, but the lady insisted. The Von Closen line must appear beautiful, and she had bruised him too badly to be seen. 

He didn’t object. A single condition, and he was allowed into the city proper. It was better there, below the line of the dingy rooftops, where the streets smelled of smoke and the sky was blurry if you had the time to look up. 

Gerry could wander aimlessly for hours, and if he was on guard, it was better than the way he was on guard at home. The things he had to fear here were hard, blunt, and they smelled of salt and sweat and brickdust — at home they were sharp, slick with blood and heavy with grit. Lady Keay’s house caught in his throat and choked it, filled him with sanguine mud from the inside out. Here he might get hit, but whoever was hitting him wouldn’t stop to insult him first and shame him afterward.

And most of the time he was alright — he was conspicuous with his fine clothes and the countenance he walked with, something lordly that Mary had taught him and which he could never figure out how to shake. He hated it. He felt marked, seen, and out-of-place; he should be able to blend in with these people, but they watched him and knew at once that he came from a place they had neither the chance nor the interest to know.

He knew, too, that this ought to make him fortunate, but he was stained under his skin and found it all too easy to fantasize about running away, even if trying to live alone on the streets of the city would kill him. Defenseless, ultimately, in the real world; he could survive any one of his mother’s lessons and a thousand blows from her hand but he was helpless in a place where the attacks were low and impersonal. And still, he preferred it. Still, it was better — as anything was — than the house on the hill.

It was cold, a day trailing off the lost end of Autumn, and Gerry was headed for the docks. The water would be grey or tossed white with the wind, and the last lingering gulls would sweep silently overhead, voices washed out with the sky and the tide. Everything was grey this time of year — the branches of the city’s few trees bony and leafless, and all the warmth drained from the outer walls of buildings, leaving them cold stone and dull brick. Somewhere behind the clouds the blank pulse of the sun, weak and hazy and too easy on the eyes.

The road to the dock was long and narrow, half-forgotten storefronts and abandoned warehouses looming in on either side, and darker, still-narrower alleys disappearing every few paces to the left and right. He kept to the middle of the cobbles — at the edges it was all too easy to be snatched without warning from around a wall — and remained alert, too conscious of his surroundings by half. So focused, indeed, on what was immediately ahead of him that he did not see the boy who had rounded a corner to the left, spotted him, and leaned against the wall to wait until Gerry was not five paces away.

“Hello, your lordship!” A fine greeting. Unexpected, in that it was expected, and nobody who frequented this part of the city was wont to behave as expected. The boy had a tangle of blond curls falling haphazardly over his shoulders, freckles still unfaded from the summer months, and he was grinning a gap-toothed grin, dimples sinking deep into either side of his face. Sweet and a little devious and undeniably charming. 

“Good afternoon,” said Gerry, on guard but trying for a smile. He kept walking, and out of the corner of his eye saw the boy detach himself from the wall and saunter up beside him.

“What brings you here? So far from the high houses, majesty.”

It was almost more irritating than it was concerning. Gerry glanced at him, hoping he looked cross enough to deter him. “I’m not royal.”

The boy leaned into his shoulder — just for a moment, almost hard enough to make his bruises ache but not quite — and laughed. It was a strange sound, high and halting, and Gerry did not dislike it. “If I may … it’s all one to me, your grace,” he said, “though I might call you by a name if you’ve one to give me.”

“Gerry,” said Gerry. It was obvious as far as nicknames and use-names went, but there was no point trying to hide it. Half the people in the city would recognize him on sight, and those who didn’t would not be hard-pressed to ask.

“Hmm,” said the boy, and it was almost a sigh. “A pretty name. I am Michael, and I am at your service, my liege.” Gerry was vaguely aware of him performing some sort of complex bow in his peripheral vision. “Thank you!” he added, and Gerry frowned.

They walked on in silence for a while — Michael was persistent, apparently, and Gerry had no idea what he wanted — until the curiosity became too much to bear and Gerry rounded on him.

“What do you want, Michael?”

His face split in a grin — radiant, delighted at being addressed directly. “Why, I simply wanted to bask in your majestic presence, highness. Is that too much to ask?” His head tilted to the side, birdlike. “And, if I’m honest, there’s all that gold in your pockets; must be weighing you down. Couldn’t I help with that?” His voice shot through with amusement. “Come here.” He pulled ahead, keeping half an eye on Gerry as he beckoned him down the street. “We’re nearly arrived at my home. Humble as it may be, I hope it’ll be of  _ some  _ entertainment to your lordly self.” 

What the hell. Gerry Keay was tired, and he was reckless, and it would always be better to throw himself into danger himself than let his mother cast him there of her own accord. He followed Michael down the cobbles and into the gaping door of one of the emptied warehouses on the right.

It was large and airy and almost empty, save for a mattress in the corner and a few stacks of boxes. “Behold!” Michael threw his arms wide, laughing in the slanting beam of afternoon sun that cascaded through a hole in the roof. Dust in the air. Golden-orange light in his curls. Ragged clothes and a ragged laugh and that same easy, sharp-edged smile. “My own domain.” He bowed low, grinning at Gerry. “Does it please your lordship?”

Gerry took a deep breath. “Must you?” he asked. He was uncertain what to say.

“Oh, certainly. It wouldn’t do not to. Titles are of the utmost importance, you understand.”

Gerry grimaced. The words sounded like Lady Keay, though they were better in his voice — softer, playful rather than demanding.

“Now, where did we leave off? I believe you were going to allow me to alleviate you of some of your gold?” Michael came close, held out a hand. Smiled at him.

His tone was nothing short of amicable, almost affectionate. Like Gerry was an old friend. He sighed and fished the pouch of money out of his pocket, and began untying the knot.

“Gerry,” Michael said, and he started at the sound of his own name falling from Michael’s lips. Almost a sigh, almost a complaint. Familiar and exhausted and still ringing with that note of amusement.

“Yes?”   
He looked up from the bag and Michael’s hand was out and away like a flash, and his palm was considerably lighter. He hadn’t even seen where Michael had tucked the money. “I am sorry, my lord, but generosity is  _ such  _ a virtue.”

Gerry opened his mouth to argue. Shut it. 

“Very good. Thank you—” and he cast his eyes to the side a moment as if searching for words — “your excellency.”

“You realize that doesn’t apply?” asked Gerry, unable to resist.   
“What doesn’t?” Michael had begun circling him — not deliberately, without any apparent intent, just wandering aimlessly around Gerry or maybe the room. 

“The honorific. It’s not mine.”

“You look excellent to me,” said Michael — so light, so meaningless and casual his tone and still Gerry’s heart beat faster. He knew he was blushing. He hated that — but Michael’s voice was warm and Gerry wanted so badly to be someone worthy of praise and kindness. He would take it as a joke if it were well-intentioned enough.

Michael caught hold of one of his wrists — carefully, his grip loose, anything but a demand — and examined the rings on Gerry’s fingers, tracing the metal with a fingertip. “Does such a quantity of metal on your hands not  _ irritate  _ you, your lordship? So cold — so sharp — do they pinch? Your poor hands — allow me —” and he was taking the rings from Gerry’s fingers one by one, and Gerry wasn’t stopping him because how could he when Michael was touching his hands and he was gentle and Gerry couldn’t remember the last time he had been touched gently — if there had been a last time — and Michael was right, really, he  _ didn’t _ like rings or the way they clicked together or the scrape of the metal against his skin.

“Thank you, my lord,” laughed Michael — Gerry didn’t know where his rings had gone. And Michael had still not let go of his hand. Still grinning — casual, almost flirtatious — he raised Gerry’s hand just a fraction and bent his head to it, and his lips on Gerry’s knuckles were soft and warm and dry and Gerry was dizzy, unsure what was happening but entirely unopposed. He watched Michael’s eyes close and he could have lived in the moment that passed then, all quiet and softness and the weak sun on Michael’s face the only visible thing in the world.

“And… this?” In a stride, Michael was nearly pressed against him, warm enough to be a relief in the cold of the drafty room. His fingers were playing with Gerry’s cravat, long and elegant, tracing the knot with almost practiced precision. 

For all Gerry’s stillness, he tilted his chin up just a fraction, and when he met Michael’s eyes the boy was smirking. “Are you … trying to seduce me?” asked Gerry.

Michael laughed at that, long and languid, and now his fingers were working apart the knot at Gerry’s throat, quickly, the soft fabric unraveling easily under his touch. He came closer still, murmuring through his giggles. “Oh, darling … whatever do you think?”

Close enough to kiss. He was close enough to kiss, and then he was not, and the cravat was in his hand. His smile was wider than before, radiant and far, far too amused with himself. “No. Of course not. This is pure silk, your highness — I want to sell it.” 

He was twirling the cravat through his fingers, a flash of clean white silk, and too self-satisfied to pay close attention to Gerry. When he stopped — when his gaze did settle at last on his quarry, whose neck was now bared, covered in bruises, purple-black stains clustered stormy on his skin — he went still, all at once entirely still, and something very like fury settled into his eyes.

Gerry — he had been thinking of  _ this noble _ , but that fell away now — Gerry was a thousand orphaned boys and a hundred girls learning how to steal under the penalty of a rich man’s cane. He was the youth that cried when their parents threw them out, the one Michael would gather close and whisper reassurances to. His skin was stained and it was familiar and ugly, and the quality of the silk falling from Michael’s slackened grip was nothing in the face of this abuse. 

Michael Shelley, protector of the small. Michael Shelley, who marked the homes that left their children weeping on the sidewalks and returned to ruin them. Michael Shelley whose parents had been good and kind and had died anyway — who had been left behind by accident. Michael Shelley who might have been righteously angry that less fit parents thought they had any right to survive. Michael Shelley who maybe needed someone to hate.

“Oh, pretty noble, who did this to you?” His voice came out a whisper, close to tears. “I’m — I’m sorry.” 

Gerry looked at him and it was an expression hovering between bemusement and contempt. “What do you care?”

He just shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he murmured again, and then he was closer again, one of his hands hovering over the buttons of Gerry’s coat. “May I?”   
Gerry backed up. “No. Of course not. Don’t touch me.”

“I can help,” said Michael, and it sounded almost like pleading. “I have salve — just a little left, but … let me, please.”

The change in his demeanor was alarming and he knew it; he alarmed himself with how quickly his scorn and mockery had fallen away. And the old familiar anger was burning already in the pit of his stomach, and as always, he did his best to quiet it. He would rather help than hunt. Hunting only got the right people hurt half the time if that.

“Please. What motive have you  _ possibly  _ given me to trust you? You’ll steal my clothes and leave me here.”   
“I won’t!” And the desperation was surely in his voice now, bitter and frantic. “You can keep them right by you, I — I won’t touch them. Let me help, please.” 

Gerry looked at the ground, mouth pinched tight. A single, sharp breath through the nose. 

He shook his head. “Goodbye, Michael.” And he brushed past him, out the open door.

Michael watched him go. Did not try to stop him, did not even try to run after him to return his cravat. He felt Gerry’s money heavy in his pockets and felt sick — only slightly — but sick.

Lady Keay was unhappy.

She was never happy, really, but she was unhappy  _ with  _ her son when he returned, bruised skin clearly visible above his coat collar, penniless, with the very rings stolen from his fingers. 

“Pathetic. I feed and clothe you and provide for you in  _ every  _ way, and you are a foolish boy indeed. Our blood will not be threatened by your … incompetence, Gerard. Hide your bruises, I don’t want to look at them. Better yet: leave my sight entirely.”

He left. The room at the top of the tower was round and dimly-lit, but he could see all the way over the city, lights and the lines of filthy streets and the slower, trundling forms of carts and their horses. Dark purple and darker black pooled in the looming shadows of buildings; twilight gathered thick and heavy over the roadways. He let his jacket fall to the ground, stripped himself of all that he wore and stood at the window, looking anywhere but at his own body. Dark purple and darker black pooled under his skin, echoes of the ordinary world he had been denied, and he imagined that someone might look up and see him bruised and slumping in the dull gold lamplight. That he could ruin her legacy without even trying.

Maps had always come easily to him, and his eyes followed the lines of the streets with no problem, out into the square, through back alleys and along toward the quay. There was the warehouse, dark and abandoned to the eye. There was Michael, maybe, if he had not moved on already.

Michael, whose breathing had been so soft against his face, whose hands were dexterous and as gentle as they were sharp; Michael with tears in his eyes, rocks in his voice, who had offered to help.

He didn’t want to help. Certainly, he did not want to help. There was no reason he should want that; no reason for his hands to touch Gerry’s skin, his voice to be kind and sympathetic to Gerry’s ears, unless it were a means to an end. Gerry would leave half-patched and more hurt than before, and Michael would sell fine silk and laugh when morning broke. 

Gerry turned from the window and collapsed into bed. He was aching under his skin and he did not care.

It was impossible to quit his habit of walking the streets. The world was wide and the air smelled like salt, and he was so firmly tethered to his mother’s house that he never had any real hope of leaving it behind anyway. Better, though, to be out in the dingy air with the sharp-wire knowledge of his return pulling on him than trapped in the dust and shadows of the Von Closen house. Better to escape his mother’s anger for a few hours at the price of risking it further on his return. All her anger at once in the evening, he decided, was preferable to more subtle wounds throughout the day. 

And the day was long and beautiful. He bought a loaf of bread and an apple and sat on the steps of some imposing stone building to eat, watching people pass, wondering at the simple mundanity of their lives. 

He saw Michael this time before Michael caught sight of him. He was in animated conversation with a young woman on the streetcorner, laughing and nodding and Gerry remembered, then, to watch his hands. Sure enough, they were wandering to her neck, her wrists, and with every motion he would cock an eyebrow or hum a question and she would almost nod, and a flash of gold or jewels would disappear into his pocket. She looked surprised; bemused; but almost entirely unbothered otherwise. 

How he did it was beyond Gerry. He barely remembered what Michael had said to him in the few minutes it had taken to divest him of most of his valuables last time; charming words, flattering, with just enough of an edge to them to keep Gerry humble and quiet. It was an art. Gerry found himself almost lost in appreciating it.

Michael patted the woman on the shoulder and she moved on, looking slightly dazed; and all at once he turned, caught sight of Gerry, and grew wide-eyed with recognition. He was over the cobbles and across the street in an instant. 

He moved just slightly — almost as if to sit down next to Gerry, and then seemed to think better of it. And so he hovered, standing, a few feet from the stairs. He cleared his throat, and it was a nervous sound, uncharacteristic, but when he spoke he was close to his usual confidence.    
“Hello, highness.”

Gerry rolled his eyes. “Don’t call me that.” He gestured to the stair next to him, and knew the motion looked almost imperious but decided not to think too hard on it. “You can sit. It’s alright.”

Michael sat.

There was a long quiet, and they stared at the carts and people passing, breathed in the coalsmoke that drifted low over the street. Gerry handed the remainder of his bread to Michael, who took it without question. 

“I’m sorry,” muttered Michael at last. “Too much — I know — and you’d no reason to trust me. But if you’re hurt, still, you can … I don’t know. I’ve got you.” His voice dropped off into nearly a whisper, and dizziness and confusion stirred in Gerry in equal measure. 

“Thanks,” he said finally. A little rough, more curt than he should be to the first genuine offer of care he had ever received. It was a start.

And what reason did he have not to follow Michael back to the warehouse? (Michael finished the bread, and stood, and offered him a hand; he took it.) Another rebellion in a series of rebellions, if he was really as determined as he wished to resist Mary’s hold on him. (The streets were long and winding and dusk was gathering, oozing out from between the cobblestones, but Michael did not let go of his hand.) He could let Michael be good to him; rather be tended by a thief than struck by a noble, and he would have one whether he asked for it or not. There was no reason not to take the other.

Michael was shaking when they got back to the warehouse, and he relinquished Gerry’s hand with as much relief as reluctance. “Sit,” he mumbled, pointing Gerry to an overturned crate. 

The jar of salve felt too light; Gerry was badly bruised, and there was precious little left to help him. “Take off your coat,” he said, “and your shirt.” Gerry complied, dropped the expensive fabric almost carelessly on the dusty floor.

He was badly bruised and scarred, if possible, worse — mottled purple and pale cords of long-healed cuts running up and down his arms, across his back and chest. Michael stopped breathing for a second, seeing it.  _ What happened to you?  _ He said nothing, of course, only knelt by the crate and brought his hands to Gerry’s arms, almost afraid to touch him even to rub the salve into his skin. But Gerry caught his eye and shrugged, so he ran his hands over Gerry’s arms, his shoulders, across the length of his collarbones, doing his best to be gentle. 

He watched Gerry’s face, scanning for any sign of pain or discomfort, but there was none — his eyes fluttered closed, and his lashes were surprisingly light, and Michael felt his shoulders relax under his touch. So he was helping. 

And it was nice following the slope of Gerry’s shoulders, the curve of his neck, the length of his arms, forgetting himself in the motions. It had always been easier to help others than to fuss over himself, and Gerry sat so quietly and let him rub circles against his bruised wrists, and Michael saw the tension and fear drain from his face until he was almost smiling. 

It was like breaking out of a reverie when Michael was done — he took his hand from Gerry’s wrist and realized he had no reason to put it back, and sat in silence for a moment. “Better now?” he whispered.

Gerry’s eyes snapped open. “Yes. Thank you.” Soft and genuine and perhaps a little surprised. 

“Of course—” Michael cut himself off before he could say  _ highness _ . “Gerry. Here, stand up.” He gathered Gerry’s shirt and coat off the floor, shook them to throw off the dust they had gathered. Gerry took them, soundless, and Michael watched him in the low light throw his shirt over his shoulders, phantom-white in the shadows that dropped from the ceiling; tie his cravat again with expert fingers, a little crooked but deft, elegant. And then his coat was on and he was covered, secure, and all the vulnerability that he’d allowed Michael to lay bare was gone. 

“Thank you again,” he said, the ghost of a smile on his face. “Really.”

Michael nodded. “You can come back. If there’s anything else I can do.”

Gerry reached out and clasped his hand, just briefly. The press of his fingers lingered against Michael’s skin long after he was gone. 

It was a long time before Gerry came back. He felt strange — strange about letting Michael see him, the lines and patterns of Mary’s lessons and punishments etched so evident across his skin; strange about Michael’s hands leaving him soft, weak in the way he had leaned into the touches, economical and precise but almost a caress. It was strange. Michael was strange. His eyes flashed in the curtained dark of the warehouse and his fingers were long and nimble and so surprisingly soft. He looked like he could pluck his way to Gerry’s heart one rib at a time and Gerry wouldn’t even have the wherewithal to complain. He looked dangerous, and Gerry had always been terribly allured by danger. 

Still. He let a week and then two pass before letting himself wander Michael’s way again. The dance of the fire was the flash of his curls in sunlight; the wavering lights visible down the sloping hill in the harbor were his eyes, gently flickering in the dark. Gerry’s bruises ached doubly now, their own dull pain and the longing, the empty place where the memory of soothing hands yawned open. Cavernous. Reaching. 

He hated it, and he couldn’t take it for long. On the fifteenth day he was back down the streets, tripping over cobblestones, swatting idly at the flies that had started to gather for the summer months. 

Michael. Maybe he had moved on. Gerry checked the street corners, shop doors, everywhere he thought he remembered a willow-leaf laugh and motions like quicksilver. He wasn’t there. 

The warehouse was. He paused across the street, uncertain. To vanish for weeks and then come right to Michael’s door — it felt unfair, a presumption, and infraction. Hovering on the edge of the gutter, hands curling and uncurling at his sides. 

He crossed the street and Michael’s face appeared radiant in the doorway, and he raised a hand to beckon Gerry inside. Gerry felt himself smile, almost against his own will, and crossed the street without a second thought.

“Hello, Michael,” he said in the doorway, and he was surprised at how light his voice sounded. He felt better already. 

“Gerry,” he said, paused, and performed some kind of elaborate pantomime of shock — a long-fingered hand raised to his mouth, eyes wide, lips parted in a perfect  _ o  _ that lasted only a second before falling into a grin. “Forgive me — your lordship.”

“I said you don’t have to —”

“It’s an expression of … admiration, Gerry,” he sighed.

“It  _ sounds  _ like a mockery.”

“Oh, it’s that, too.” Michael’s grin was unbearable, somehow affectionate and mischievous all at once. “What brings you back?”

Gerry stood still in the doorway, unsure how to answer. He didn’t know, really. He wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to be back. A rebellion, maybe — the hope that he’d leave lighter than he came, and Mary would see and hate him for it. More likely, a search for comfort. He ached. 

“I was passing by. I thought I’d see how you were.”

“Are you certain, my liege? I saw you linger across the street — so deliberate, so nervous. Have you come bearing gifts? I have heard generosity is often  _ so  _ difficult for the gentlemen in their high houses, but rest assured, I am more than happy to take what I am scarcely offered. Oh! Your earrings, my lord. May I?”

He was talking quickly, his voice fluttering in the chill air of the warehouse, and he hovered mere steps from Gerry, hands raised. Gerry nodded, because of course he did. He was all too aware of his own stillness — he made no motion to simply remove the jewels from his ears himself, and he saw Michael notice, saw the slight widening of his grin before he drew near. Gerry could feel his breath against his face, the brush of his fingers against his neck while Michael fussed with the clasps, and it was all he could do not to take Michael’s hand and hold it there, press it to his cheek. 

And then Michael was gone and with him all the warmth in the world, and he was standing radiant in a column of light, sleeves ragged, smiling, admiring the glint of the earrings. “Thank you,” he said, satisfied, and Gerry’s mouth turned up against his will and he rolled his eyes. 

“Is there anything I can give you in return, lordship?” asked Michael, stowing the earrings in his shirt pocket. “Not of material value, you understand, but — a sentiment? A charm? A moment, an adventure? I am at your beck and call in most things.”

Gerry hesitated. “Do you have more salve?”

He watched Michael’s face fall, regret and guilt and worry so strange on that bright devious face. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “I’m sorry. I looked, but it’s not — common to come by.”

Gerry nodded, hoped he looked reassuring. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t really expect so anyway.”

“Would a distraction suit you? Or rest — I can offer rest.” 

“A distraction would be lovely,” said Gerry, entirely unsure what that might entail. 

It was the right decision. Michael led him to the square, linked their arms and talked of nothing in particular, rambling observations of the buildings, the people, the trees planted in stately rows and losing their last leaves to November. His voice was nice. 

Gerry knew he was losing things — registered, vaguely, every half-request or quirk of an eyebrow that meant Michael was lifting something from his pockets, plucking a loose button from his coat. He didn’t mind. It was worth it for the feeling of freedom, the rush that this gave him, walking arm-in-arm with a vagabond and his mother’s house forgotten and rotting on the hill. They were turned away from it, meandering generally in the direction of the sea, and it made Gerry happy. The light reflected off of the water, harsh and ice-cold, and Michael was shivering through his ragged coat.

“Do you want my coat, Michael?”   
“Are you offering?”

Of course. He had almost forgotten. “Yes,” he said, because he ran warm and he didn’t like to see Michael shiver while his pockets sagged with treasures. Gerry didn’t know why, really — why he felt so strongly that Michael was someone to be cared for, protected — maybe it was just reciprocity. Michael had been good to him. It was the least he could do to try to be kind in return.

He shrugged off his coat and handed it to Michael, who took it with a tilt of his head and a glance, barely noticeable, over Gerry, that much closer to vulnerability again. 

“Thank you,” he said, and when he had the coat on he spun in a circle, let the tails fan out and pressed his hands to his breast, delighted, laughing. “It’s wonderful! Such finery. Really, you ought to be more careful with your possessions.”

But Gerry was laughing too, seeing him, watching open joy battle with his usual expression of teasing mockery.

It was, perhaps, a little too easy to feel light around Michael. And everything in the pockets of his coat was lost to him, too. He went home happy that evening.

Happiness never lasted long in the Von Closen house. He avoided her sight when he arrived — she would not know about the things he’d lost to Michael, so eventually he could return. But there were books stacked in the hallways and lessons to be learned and swords to be drawn against enemies Gerry never even had a chance with. 

He  _ ached  _ for Michael. The bruises didn’t bother him anymore, save for the way they echoed. But he was lonely, genuinely lonely for the first time in his life without that laugh echoing along beside him, those hands that he never quite remembered to keep track of darting in and out of his pockets. He had thought it was the thrill of rebellion he missed but it was something else, something that had nothing to do with Michael’s lawlessness and everything to do with the way his voice got quiet and his smile flickered bright to brighter and his hands were soft. 

There were rare occasions when Mary let him out — more often than not on an errand, but he would take it. He stopped at Michael’s door, but the time of day was strange and he was almost never there. Three times only they met, and Gerry did not still Michael’s hands when they reached for his pocketwatch. 

He worried that if Mary found him arriving home robbed again she would forbid his roaming the streets entirely. But he worried more that if Gerry stopped him, Michael would draw conclusions, link the bruises with his thefts. Mary had never struck him for the losses — it was the sort of thing she punished with words, not violence, and she had only caught him the once — but there was no guarantee Michael would believe him, and Gerry had seen his face when he noticed the bruising. If he thought there was even a chance his pickpocketing was harming Gerry, he would stop. And if he stopped, he would have no use for Gerry’s company. 

Better, then, to be careful. Time his arrival and simply not be caught. Fill his pockets with jewels she did not know he had taken and would not miss. 

He had no use for his valuables, and he said as much to Michael in the quick exchanges, requests for permission that he still hardly registered as deceit even now. If he was honest, he wanted to help Michael.  _ Help  _ might have been the wrong word — Michael could and did help himself. To give to him then, or to allow him to take. It hardly mattered. He liked watching the smile he got at the end of the day, which he could only assume was the thrill of a con well-played. And if his pockets didn’t seem as light as they used to when he left — well — perhaps it had been a good week.

They were brief meetings. Michael would appear from a side-street or Gerry would find an excuse to pass by the warehouse, and for a moment only he would feel something in him float, perfect and untouchable, suspended in the glow of Michael’s presence. Good, then, despite their brevity. 

It only made him miss Michael more when he was in Mary’s house. The dark-panelled walls of the upstairs hallway, mothwing and rot in the attic, and the dining room where shadows carpeted the floor. 

And the reprieves dwindled. Less and less often he found himself out the door and in the smoke-scented encroaching winter. The days dragged into weeks and the shadow-tones of Mary’s house surrounded him, pressed closer, crushing. She locked the door.

The lessons got harsher — she had new books, new spells for him to sing and new creatures that oozed from their pages for him to fight, win against, lose to. He realized, now more than ever, how much he had been holding on to his meetings with Michael, requiring them to make it through long nights and early mornings and bloodstains upon bloodstains, layered on the floor like half-dry paint. And it felt wrong to cling to Michael’s image in the worst moments — he wasn’t sure why — maybe it was that he hardly knew him, had no reason, really, to picture his face when the next horrible creature was bearing down on him — maybe it was that it felt like a curse, as though by associating Michael with these things Gerry was calling them down on him.

It was irrational, of course, and he knew it. But it didn’t help. 

Michael missed him. More accurately, he thought, he missed his riches. Gerry had been a veritable gold mine of fine jewelry and silk, and if he was a gold mine that Michael worried about, itched to tend to whenever he remembered the patterns of scarring under his shirt, he was first and foremost a source of wealth. 

It was a nice lie, if not a very convincing one. He had almost been able to believe it when Gerry was beside him and his hands were closing around the loose coins and assorted jewels in his pockets — so unguarded, so ridiculously decadent, and seemingly more so every day — but now with the days drawing darker as December wore away and Gerry absent for weeks it was harder to maintain the illusion.

He could steal valuables anywhere. The dry humor of Gerry’s voice, the lift of his eyebrow, the way he grinned in half-exasperation, half-affection was harder to come by. Michael missed the way he carried himself, almost ironic in its degree of nobility. He missed the light pooling in his eyes, turning them honey-gold; missed the way Gerry had leaned into his touch as he soothed old wounds; missed the feeling of pressing against him, warm in a cold room, watching him blush and feigning an infatuation that was decidedly not feigned anymore. 

The worry made it sharper. He feared for Gerry, alone in whatever high house he came from. Michael had never bothered to ask — it made no difference to him, and after a while it was almost more out of respect for Gerry’s privacy than anything else, not that Michael would have admitted it. 

He worried, though, and it was easy enough to find out. He knew the docks that Gerry frequented, whenever the mother he mentioned only in mumbles and handwaves sent him after some parcel or another (parcels he accepted with trepidation, as though he were afraid of what they contained). Michael knew who to ask — who could tell him, if he inquired after the pale dark-haired noble with a ring in his nose and tattoos on the backs of his hands.

And so he had an answer.

Michael wasn’t certain where to go from there. He feared the woman who kept Gerry at the house — if he was honest, he feared the house and always had where it rose black against the sky, looming above the rest of the city. He couldn’t go to the door, and to send a note would be a risk — if Gerry’s mother found it — he thought of the handprint pressed mottled purple into Gerry’s wrist and shuddered.

Still. Gerry needed out, Michael was certain of it. And he didn’t know who received the mail at the Von Closen home. If there was a servant, or if Gerry himself came to the door — it was worth taking a chance, and he could charm the mailman into keeping his secrets if Lady Keay took her letters herself.

Paper was easy to find, and he’d stolen a bottle of ink and a feather dropped by a stray chicken months ago. He used them when it was easier to play a long con or a subtle one, and he could write with the practiced looping cursive of a noble or the scribble of a child or the careless scrawling of a dockmaster. 

None of that felt right. He knew he had no façade around Gerry, and even to pretend to feign it — he didn’t want to. Michael hardly remembered what his own handwriting looked like anymore, how it felt to move the pen with less regard for how his words looked than what they meant, and it felt strange and vulnerable, like it was a part of himself he was spilling out on the page.  _ See, here is the way my hand moves, here are the paths carved by my thoughts of you when I’m not even looking. _

The note was short. He tried to keep it innocuous. Really, he didn’t know what to say. Gerry expected nothing of him but deceit and he expected nothing of Gerry at all.

It said  _ I wait for you _ . Michael waited.

Mary had locked herself again in the study with the instruction only to feed himself and stay inside and take the post when it arrived. She knew he would not try to leave — knew he knew she saw him, or would. At noon he walked the quarter-mile to the gates in a fit of melancholy, hardly worrying about whatever vile packages she might be having delivered. 

He wanted to walk right past the postman and into the street. He did not.

“Gerry Keay?” asked the postman, and he blinked to hear the nickname. It wasn’t how he was meant to be known — really, it had only been a name he’d known himself by until Michael had asked.

He nodded. The postman smiled at him, and weeks of Mary and silence and harsh glances across the dining table had him weak for any expression of kindness or joy, and he cursed himself for the tightness in his throat when he smiled back.

“Enjoy,” said the postman, and handed him a pile of tightly bundled rectangular packages — more books and a couple of finely-sealed letters for Mary — before turning on his heels and vanishing down the hill, whistling softly.

Gerry frowned, looked again at the stack in his hand.

There was something else. A folded piece of paper, labelled with only his name in a corner. He didn’t recognize the handwriting — it was hasty, off-kilter and slanting to the left. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind whose it was, and his heart beat too fast already.

He hurried back up the walk, left the packages where Mary would find them and retreated to his window, glancing out in the direction of Michael’s warehouse.

_ Gerry. _ _  
_ _ I wait for you. I want you well. Come back soon. _

_ -M. _

Simple enough. Entirely baffling. He shook, and tore the note into pieces and let them flutter to the ground outside, still mulchy with the morning’s rain. He glanced back up, found the warehouse, and thought for a moment that he saw a figure on the roof, silhouetted against the setting sun. He blinked, squinted at the shape. It moved. Rose — as though it were standing — and bent nearly in half.

Dizziness threatened to overwhelm him, and he closed the window and turned away.

If Michael had sent for him, he would follow. It was easier said than done — Mary wanted him in, had been very clear that his isolation was important to her. Fog lingered in the hallway outside her study and he thought he understood her game. Unfortunately, she understood his just as well, and if she commanded his presence, it was impossible to leave without her finding out at once.

Another week passed before her plans solidified, and she handed him a book that smelled of the sea — not the sea at the harbor, littered with boats and strung from dockpost to pier with the shouts of mariners and traders and children diving for coins, but the dead sea, the places where the foamy saltwater washed against grey sand and things that were once seals lay rotting on the beach. It was going to devour him — fog poured from the pages and choked him, twined around the inside of his throat and suffocated, slid behind his eyes and covered him with a grey film that promised nothing but this forever, nothing but Mary’s high walls and thick noise-swallowing carpets and a mother who looked at him only when he could be of a use she would never so much as acknowledge.

It ate at him, but he knew this well — he recognized the patterns by now, the way some books made you bleed and others grew bones where there shouldn’t be and one had plunged the house into darkness for a week. He knew where there was fog, there was loneliness, and he knew he should be lonely but there was something in that note — something in the memory of a dimpled smile and hands moving steadily over the planes of his back that steadied him, kept him solid where the fog threatened to dissolve.

He also knew that if Mary could tell he had found someone who was actively preventing her experiments from working on him he would never see Michael again. So he fastened the image of Michael twirling in the beam of light from the warehouse’s broken roof behind his eyes and pretended to choke, pretended to collapse in on himself and lie shaking and frozen and stain the kitchen floor with his tears.

Really, it was only half an act. The fog had always been particularly convincing.

When she closed the book and left the room he stayed like that for a while, limbs stiff, face tracked with half-dried tears.

Mary did not acknowledge him at dinner that night, but she looked satisfied, and when she rose to go to bed she said, “You’ll present a good face when you leave. If I receive a single inquiry after your health you will know worse than today.”

He didn’t spare her a glance or a shift in expression, but he smiled when she left the room.

She’d locked away his coat and gloves and he was in too much of a hurry to look for them — too much of a hurry to stop and look for anything, and it was only when he was shivering halfway down the darkened streets that he realized he’d brought nothing for Michael. A poor gift, him in his drab vest and a linen cravat.

He did not want to turn around. It felt like a spell, a false reprieve that would be lifted the instant his foot touched Mary’s halls again. He held himself in a desperate attempt to keep the cold away and forged on toward the warehouse.

Michael had nearly given up hope. Gerry had not received the note, and there seemed too great a risk in sending another — a week had passed and the streets were as barren of him as ever. It should have been easier not to care; the winter merchants flooded the docks and meandered up through the streets and Michael was quick, bright-eyed, charming and came away with as much as he wished. It was a game. 

It was a game that nobody but him was ever really playing, much as he imagined they were, except when it was Gerry. Gerry, who he knew saw his every question, whose eyes sometimes darted involuntarily to his hand as he reached for a loose button or the clasp of a bracelet. He missed that. Missed being seen, understood, and permitted — even encouraged — to go on. He felt  _ allowed  _ in Gerry’s company, and it was a novel feeling. A gift he had never even conceived of for his own, to be allowed.

He wanted to be allowed more — a dangerous gift, to be seen like this, because he felt now that there was nothing that he needed to hide, that if he confessed to missing the closeness, the way Gerry blushed under his touch, Gerry would permit that too or even welcome it, and of course he would not. But he wanted it so badly — the way nausea rose in his stomach at the thought of Gerry alone, the way his hands itched to hold him had made it, in the end, impossible to deny.

He lay back on his mattress and sighed; he was languishing, lovesick, and he hated himself for it.

And then night fell, and there were hurried footsteps on the cobbles, and he stood to defend himself and recognized all at once the shape hazily outlined in the door.

Gerry’s voice, soft and hoarse in the dark. “What do you want from me?”

_ Your time. Your touch. Your voice in my ear — your hand in my hand — your hair slipping through my fingers — your heart in my chest.  _

“Come here,” said Michael.

The silhouette in the doorway moved. Close and closer still, until Michael could see his face in the shadows, almost feel the phantom of warmth from where he stood. He looked tired. A little sad. He looked like he was having trouble drawing steady breaths. 

“I didn’t bring anything valuable. I have nothing to offer you.”

_ Yourself. Yourself. Yourself.  _

Michael stepped closer; a single stride and he was within inches of Gerry. He did not break eye contact. If he had not been well-practiced in stilling himself, he would have been shaking. 

“Sweet my liege, surely you realize you can never come … wholly worthless?”

Gerry frowned. “I’m sorry?”

“Look at yourself.” He breathed the words — reverence in his voice, honest unabashed reverence and he should have been ashamed but — “finer, I think, than anything you could carry. More beautiful … far more dear.” Smiling now he raised a hand — tentatively, hesitant — to Gerry’s jaw and traced along it with a single fingertip. Felt him go still, utterly still under the touch. “Soft skin,” and with his other hand he took one of Gerry’s, brushing a thumb over the fluted bones, the soft veins raised from under his skin. “Pretty hands.” Michael moved as if in a trance, hardly aware of his own actions. The hand tracing Gerry’s jaw settled under his chin and he tilted his head up just enough to make his intentions clear. “May I …” and he laughed. “May I have a kiss?”

Hardly had he spoken before Gerry’s free arm was wrapped around his waist, pulling him close until there was nothing between them and Gerry was kissing him — kissing him like drinking ambrosia, like summertime, like gold in his hands but more delicate, more gently used. Michael wanted nothing more than to be soft for him — held him like he wanted his arms to be an answer.  _ Find something, here, in me. Let me be something for you _ .

He reached for the ribbon in Gerry’s hair and pulled it loose, and he knew he was making a mess of it, that when he looked at him next Gerry would be disheveled and radiant and far too beautiful for Michael to handle. He lost his hands in Gerry’s hair and kissed him deeper. 

And they broke apart only briefly before Michael’s hands were back at Gerry’s cravat, and one or both of them was laughing at the absurdity, the memory of a first meeting lost in knowing one another so well. Practiced fingers, too-long too-quick and gently determined, made quick work of the knot, and the cravat was forgotten on the ground. 

Michael was slower now, his movements more careful; Gerry’s throat was badly bruised and he kissed it tenderly, lips barely skimming the discolored skin. As though he could heal, or at least soothe. As though if he loved Gerry softly enough the wounds that were already there would close up and fade away. And he heard Gerry’s breath catch and smiled against his skin, thinking that maybe it was working.

“I love you,” he whispered without raising his head. He felt Gerry shiver and kissed his jaw, pulling him closer still. 

Gerry did not want to go home, and for the first time, he had somewhere else to stay. And it was only a worn mattress at the back of a warehouse, but Michael took his hand and led him there, lay beside him and kissed his shoulders, threw an arm over his waist, and it already felt right in a way Mary’s house never had. He pressed himself closer and mumbled adorations and goodnights, and fell asleep happy.

Waking was better still — waking to find Michael still there, brushing Gerry’s hair behind his ear and smiling at him, warm and real and the light spilling through the high windows catching in his hair. “Good morning, my liege,” he said, and Gerry grimaced.

“Must you?”

“Is there something you would prefer?” He was visibly holding back a smile.

“ _ Anything _ ,” said Gerry.

“Good morning, my darling,” said Michael, and all the flirtation had dropped out of his voice — the words soft and real and ordinary as he kissed Gerry’s brow. “Glad to find you here.”

Gerry hummed — “Where else?” — reaching up to brush a curl behind Michael’s ear, smiling with such open unconcern that Michael thought he might die of it, this contented adoration. It was so rare to see Gerry content. 

_ What now?  _ He wanted to ask, but didn’t. Better to enjoy this. Better to let Gerry wrap him up in his arms, lie too long in the sea-salt cool of the morning, pressed close for body heat or maybe just comfort. Michael felt safe very seldom, but this was good, this was right and the unconcerned brush of Gerry’s fingers over his skin banished the usual wariness and frantic planning for the next con.

He was so practiced. So very good at hiding the way his mind raced, the constant pressure to do what he had to and do it well, and do  _ good _ , do right by others. He knew, of course, that no matter the mumbled  _ may I _ ?s and raised eyebrows, half-excuses for an inquiring look, that it was still stealing. He had perfected the art of letting his requests go unnoticed, washed away in the tide of chatter and smiles, until it was like he had never asked and they had not so much answered as failed to object, and their rings were on his fingers and their gold tucked in his every pocket. And, of course, if they never registered him asking, what was the point in asking at all?   
But it would be  _ unconscionable  _ not to, and besides, his way was fun. 

And better still was Gerry, Gerry who had joked he had stolen Michael’s heart and could not have been more wrong. Michael was  _ blossoming _ , Michael was overwhelmed with adoration and his heart was too full, joy spilling over and expanding in his ribcage. There was more of Michael; Gerry had made more of him, placed things he had forgotten or maybe never had in the first place back in his chest. It was call-and-response; it was a dance; it was Gerry’s every action and word lighting something new in Michael and Michael’s mind working double-time, his body lighter with the knowledge of Gerry’s love and appreciation. 

He was soft, and he was supposed to be sharp, but it was okay. For now, it was okay to let the morning drag itself into light and relative peace. To let Gerry lean over him and look at him, brush his hair aside and trace the contours of his face, speak to him like he was the echo and the answer, the spark and the fire, the ocean and the shore. Enough to let all his softness and the way he was opening up and unraveling show in the wideness of his eyes. 

It was a long morning, and a content one. Gerry spoke poetry to the ceiling, not looking at Michael, cheeks blushing pink, and it was strange because he sounded so sincere and Michael was so used to falsehood. Michael told Gerry stories of all the places he had been and all the places he intended to go, and if he exaggerated a little it was only because he wanted them to be beautiful, exquisite, perfect in Gerry’s mind. He wanted to build Gerry a version of the world where the sun was warm instead of scorching and the life in cities was bright and healthy and when winter came it came soft and forgiving over the land.

Of course he knew such a world did not and could not exist, and he knew Gerry knew; but the words felt good in his mouth. A false promise only insofar as he didn’t have the power to make it true the way he felt it. 

Eventually they sat up and Michael shared the last of a loaf of bread he had stashed in the corner — slightly stale and over Gerry’s protests that he had food at home. 

“Let me do this for you.” And Gerry relented, eyes tired and soft and honey-gold in the noontime light filtering through the holes in the roof. Happiness came easy that day.

Gerry couldn’t stay forever, and he knew it. He had already been gone too long — if Mary suspected him of more than a polite delay she had the means and the volition to send search parties after him. She needed him, and he knew it — for his usefulness and for his silence, she needed him under her watch and command. 

So when the sun had begun its fall in earnest he stood in the doorway of the warehouse and looked at Michael, held his face in his hands and wondered how he could even begin to explain the ache in his chest.

“Thank you,” he said, and he tried to make it sound sincere but letters were only letters and words were only words.

“Of course, my love,” said Michael, and that slight grin played over his lips and Gerry did not want to go anywhere.

“I’ll miss you,” he said, and “I love you,” and Michael said them back, kissed his temples and fussed with the knot of his cravat, straightening it. He didn’t meet Gerry’s eyes, but he was smiling something between peace and melancholy and Gerry’s heart cracked a little but it was only light inside.

“I’ll come back.”   
“I know,” said Michael, and cupped the back of his head and kissed him, for parting and for the promise of a reunion. Gerry did his best to drink in the memory, the feeling of Michael real and solid with his arms around him, and when he left he did not look back until he was at the very end of the street. Michael still stood outside the warehouse, burning in the late sun, orange flame and yellow flower and then, with a mocking bow, he was gone.

Gerry laughed, very quietly, in the street and made it home as it was turning to dusk.

Mary was unhappy but asked few questions; she had a task for him, and another, and he wasn’t certain if this was a busy week or a punishment delivered wordlessly, violently. He did what she asked and read what she ordered him to and missed being touched kindly. Michael was waiting somewhere in the dust-lined streets and Gerry was tired and frustrated with how long it was taking to return to him. 

It was fine. Michael had waited before and Michael was dedicated, consistent, and surprisingly open in his deceptions; his love had not been one. Still. Gerry worried — he hoped he had been the same for Michael, made clear the same kind of devotion and certainty, but in so long with only silence — Michael had seen better places than this city and might again. Gerry did not want him to leave without saying goodbye.

Of course he didn’t. When the first week was bleeding into the second Mary’s instructions lapsed, and Gerry fled again, stole bread and cheese and a box of strawberries from the pantry and wove his way down in the direction of the wharfs, toward the warehouse.    
Michael was not inside, but his mattress was still in the corner and the dust had not settled so thickly on the floor that Gerry was worried. He sat down; drew invisible patterns on the splintery wood with one finger; became so absorbed that he almost did not hear the delighted gasp from the doorway.

But he did, because it was Michael, and it was followed by his name in the most bright and joyful of tones and all the stars spilled again out of his heart until he had them in handfuls and reached for Michael instead.

Michael’s hands were laden with treasures, real solid sparkling things that he dropped — they scattered along the floor and Gerry felt Michael’s arms wrap around him, hold him close. 

“I missed you,” Michael murmured into his hair. “Where have you been?”

Gerry shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I missed you too.” 

It was a long time before they let go — Gerry listened to Michael’s heart beating through the threadbare fabric of his coat and felt his own heart calm, the nervous excitement and fear of waiting for him dying slowly, a candle fading low into softness and gentle light. 

Finally he heard Michael laugh and pulled away just enough to look at him — radiant, when he laughed, that dimpled smile and his eyes like the sea at noon — and he was looking across the room, where Gerry had laid out the food he had brought just to occupy his hands while he waited. 

“A gift, my liege lord?” Unabashed, playful delight in his voice. “Did you wish to avoid the trouble of having me choose from your valuables at my own pleasure?”

Gerry laughed, a short breath of amusement and took Michael’s hand. “I’ll admit I thought it’d be nice to give without you asking for a change, yes, but mostly I just thought we ought to share a meal. Come,” and he sat crosslegged on the floor and let Michael lay his head in his lap. 

Michael talked almost too much to eat, gazing up at Gerry with that constant easy charisma but something else too — something open and vulnerable and sweet that cored Gerry, cut him to the quick and made him dizzy with affection. Pocket knife in one hand, he cut the greens from strawberries and found the moments in between Michael’s babblings to hold them to his lips, watched his eyes flutter closed and his mouth turn up at the sweetness, lips stained pink and sugary and after a while it was too much not to kiss them. 

He asked, first, and Michael kept his eyes closed when he nodded. Gerry tasted strawberries on his own lips afterward and kissed him again because there was no reason not to and he looked beautiful, soft and ecstatic and blissful with his curls spilling onto the floor.

Still — for all his joviality, Gerry knew Michael was never carefree for long. They were leaning against the wall sharing bread and Gerry watched his face, saw the moment he resolved himself. 

“Really, though. What kept you?” He did not have to look to know Michael was eyeing his cravat, looking for the trace of a bruise showing from behind the white fabric.

“What do you expect, Michael?”

He felt more than heard Michael sigh — Michael, whose laughter always ended in soft trailing exhalations, who made a sigh sound like a reverie, hushed into forlorn quiet. He hated it — hated knowing Michael was hurting for him. He knew at one point he had wished for that — just longed for someone to agonize over his well-being for a change — and now he had it and he  _ despised  _ it.

_ Don’t fret _ , he wanted to say, or  _ it’s not so bad _ , or  _ cheer up, I’ll be fine _ . Half-true, maybe; he was good at surviving. It didn’t feel true, though, and Michael was not the kind of person he wanted to lie to.

“I’m sorry,” said Michael.

“Don’t be,” said Gerry. “I’m used … you make it better. Let’s not talk about her.”

Michael took a breath and Gerry was sure he was going to protest, but he was quiet. “Fine,” he mumbled after a minute. “Do you need anything?”

Gerry shook his head. Nodded. Leaned against Michael’s shoulder. “Sing to me?”

Disbelieving laughter. Crystalline and liquid and beautiful — Gerry loved it — and it rang through the room and faded out in the familiar trail of sighs. “I can’t sing, darling.”

Gerry sighed. “I like your voice. I like music. I don’t see what there could possibly be to dislike about you singing.”

“I haven’t the least bit of a range —”

“Please?”

Michael breathed out, slowly. “Very well,” he said, but he sounded endeared.

His voice started quiet, a little hoarse in the dust and dusk of the warehouse. It was nice. Faltering, strangely hesitant; this voice, so durably laced with confidence, fallen to nervousness. It made him sound gentle — not gentle in the way he usually was with Gerry, carefully and almost deliberately soft, but really, centrally gentle. He loved it. He loved Michael’s voice in all its shades, quick as the sea or slow as a river and always the same in the way it washed over him, surrounded him, drowning out everything else.

It was a lullabye, maybe, or some quiet afternoon song for when the drone of summer was loud and the sun was high. Winter was encroaching and it was nice, now, to hear Michael sing of green things and birdsong, made softer still by his voice. Gerry let his eyes fall closed, pressed his cheek to Michael’s shoulder and let himself feel vulnerable.

For all his lessons and fine clothes and the instructions always whispered in the back of his mind to walk well, speak well, be fine and noble and perfectly preserved now and forever, he was finding it remarkably easy to let go. It was a facade that had always worn at him. Michael lifted it piece by piece and he did not ask for it back.

It became a routine. Every couple of weeks — sometimes two weeks in a row, if he was fortunate — he would steal away from his mother’s house and wander toward the docks, bring Michael what he could and leave what he never meant to. He’d stay the night once in a while, and he slept well lulled by Michael’s breathing, the rise and fall of his chest. But it had to be a rare event — he would be noticed if he vanished for so long so frequently. She would want to know where he had been, who he had seen, what he had said and done. So more often than not he kissed Michael’s hands in the doorway, let himself linger a moment, thumbs tracing the small scars and the lines of his veins, and wander at last toward the Von Closen estate with the memory of Michael a glowing ember in his chest.

Michael was bright.  _ Spirited _ , said some infuriating refined voice in his head, but it wasn’t wrong. He dragged Gerry laughing down the wharf, told him to  _ wait  _ with a flash in his eyes and mischief in every line of his smile, and came back with jewels glimmering between his fingers, the barest glimpse before he stowed them away with a wink. Gerry laughed and shook his head and thought him wonderful.

Other times he sat with Gerry in the corner of the warehouse and fussed over him, kissed his bruises and asked again and again how he could help. 

“Stay with me,” he always said, and Gerry said he couldn’t. 

“She’ll just come looking, and we’ll both be hurt.” There was another reason, but he didn’t mention it. Michael frowned and held his face, ran a thumb over his cheek. 

“The offer still stands. If you ever change your mind.”   
“Thank you,” said Gerry, and smiled at him. Michael smiled back, a little sad, and Gerry took his hand from his face and pressed it against his heart, gathered Michael close and kissed him. It was good, sweet, a thousand times easier than seeing that melancholy on his face. 

Once Michael met him glowing, practically brandishing another tin of salve, and Gerry was more delighted by the look on his face than the prospect of whatever healing it might offer. Michael’s delight was palpable, and all the sweeter for knowing it was at being able to offer help. And it was good, too, to be able to relax into Michael’s touches, to feel this as an expression of love and not some choked, confused offering of pity or obligatory aid.

So weeks passed. Mary was still Mary and the books still festered with sores and crawled with maggots and crushed the air from his lungs but later Michael would take him in his arms and kiss him breathless and dance with him to the faint music drifting in from the street. 

He was happy enough. Michael tried to teach him how to steal — let him practice reaching into his pockets, fumbling with the clasp of a bracelet around his wrist — but he had never been subtle and Michael laughed at him, though kindly.

“My lord, you mustn’t look so deliberate. Here, look at me. My eyes, darling, watch them, and smile like they’re the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.” Gerry blushed and saw Michael take it in, which only redoubled his giggles. “I know, I know, they  _ are _ , and while you were distracted I seem to have acquired two of your rings. They’re very pretty. Very well, I accept the engagement and the marriage both.” He took Gerry’s hand and kissed it, and Gerry was dizzy with him, Michael who moved too quickly and talked with such nonchalant confidence. He was more than happy to let Michael’s eyes glitter and watch him fight back laughter at his halfhearted attempts to successfully pick his pocket. 

December snowed its way into January and blocks of ice formed on the surface of the harbor. The warehouse was cold. Gerry smuggled coats and fur blankets down from the house, insisted on paying for mugs of hot cider from a street vendor. At night, they pressed close for warmth and Gerry tried to stay over more often. The air was bitter and drafty and he knew Michael ran cold, felt it in the chill of his fingertips before Gerry held them to his lips, pressed Michael’s hands against his heart until they grew warm. The sun set early still, but Michael counted the minutes on Gerry’s watch and told him every day that it had gotten later.

“Look, it’s five o’clock and there’s still light.” Wrapped around Gerry from behind, holding the watch in front of them both. “One of these days I’ll be able to see you when I kiss you goodnight.”   
Gerry laughed and watched the glow on the horizon fade until blackness fell like a curtain and Michael disentangled himself to light a row of candles. He looked different, cast in that light — still lovely, still gorgeous and burning, but softer. Tired. The energy that snapped in him during the day, the silvery edge to all his warmth was erased, and his eyes were gentle and his face was almost weary.

They sat up late, let the candles burn and drip on the half-rotting warehouse floor, and talked and talked and knew they’d remember little of what was said in the morning. It wasn’t important, the words. What mattered was the talking, and they never seemed to run dry.

When the watch held close to the candle flame marked midnight and a minute later the bell tolled from across the city, Michael blew out the lights and reached blindly for Gerry, kissed him once and twice and pressed himself close, buried his head in Gerry’s shoulder and fell asleep utterly guarded against the cold.

Gerry left reluctantly the next morning, dragged himself step by step to the house and wished he never had to leave. His gloves itched, and Michael’s hand in his when they said goodbye had been so soft. Still. He would be back, and the days missing Michael would make the reunion all the sweeter. 

The streetlights cast their long, glimmering reflections over the water, and Michael lost himself in the dim glow of them, the way they floated just above the grimy surface of the river without being lost in it. The breeze smelled of coalsmoke and fish and the night was cold, but little lights from fireplaces and lit lanterns flickered in the half-darkness of the city. 

The moon was full. Michael was leaning over the side of a bridge and waiting. He felt uncharacteristically soft and uncharacteristically happy; and then there was a shadow at his side, an arm slipped around his waist, and he melted into the touch. 

It was impossible not to smile genuinely when Gerry was around, when Gerry leaned close to kiss the curve of his lips and came away smiling himself, bright and honest and so free of the anger that marred his face most of the time. “Good evening, pretty knave,” he murmured, and Michael blushed and rolled his eyes. 

“Don’t flaunt your station, lover. I can divest you of your jewels as easily as your dignity.” And true, his hands were on Gerry’s hips and any semblance of composure Gerry might have had was falling away with every breath.

“Very well — very well, I concede.” He steadied Michael, hands on his shoulders, and reached into his bag. “I’ve brought you something. Come, sit.”

They hoisted themselves onto the wide railing, backs to the water, and Gerry held it up: round, brightly-colored, glowing warm in the frigid air.

“An orange?” Michael did not intend to breathe the words with such reverence, but save for what Gerry spirited away, fresh fruit was a rarity beyond rarities — he couldn’t remember the last time he had tasted citrus. 

“Of course. Bright and sweet and thrives in the winter. Like you.”

If the mediocre poetry tutoring was a little too evident in the bluntness of the metaphor, Michael did not notice; he was smiling at Gerry like he was holding the sun. 

“Do you want to peel it?”

Michael shook his head. His nails were bitten to the quick, and the excuse to watch Gerry work with his hands was too good to pass up. He tugged at the fingertips of his gloves, laid aside the fine white silk with a nonchalance that would have offended Michael in anyone else. But he could not bring himself to pay it much mind. 

Gerry’s slender fingers — a little crooked, bent just enough to be noticeable — the fine veins on the backs of his hands — his nails in perfect ovals breaking the orange’s skin. Strength and dexterity and a practiced elegance to them; and the smell of citrus like a starburst in the air, and the taste of it on his tongue when Gerry carefully separated a segment and held it to his lips. There were less frivolous things to be concerned with, somewhere, but for only a moment Michael could not be bothered to care. 

But when the sweetness had dissolved on their tongues and they had tossed the peelings into the harbor and watched them drift into shadow — hands sticky with nectar clasped between them on the rail — it was easy enough to care then. It had been a while, and Gerry had thrown back his head to laugh and there had been fresh bruises under his cravat, briefly exposed. 

“How have you been?” Michael asked, quiet.

“Must you?” mumbled Gerry. “The same as ever, love.”

“Why don’t you run away?”

“I — I can’t.” But his voice was hushed and uncertain and Michael Shelley knew a lie when he heard one.

“You can, Gerry. Look,” and he gestured, grand and sweeping over the river and the streetlamps and the dim lights on the horizon. “You’ve left already. You can run. With me,” he added, hoping the plea and the excitement weren’t too obvious in his voice. “If we leave the city she can’t find us.”

“Michael, I—” and he trailed off into silence, frowning, seemingly unsure how to phrase what he was thinking.

“Gerry.” An encouragement. A reassurance. A request.

“I can’t — if I leave, I — I won’t have anything for you.”   
Michael could taste the silence and it tasted horrible, burnt and dusty and something that should not have been forgotten. “What?”   
“I won’t be able to bring you food, or — oranges, or silk or … anything.”

“You think —” Michael was fighting hard not to sound panicked, sick at the very idea of Gerry still thinking like this. “Darling. What did I tell you? That first — in the warehouse, before you kissed me. What did I say?”   
Gerry’s voice was almost a whisper, but there was an edge of amusement to it when he answered. “That I could never come …  _ wholly worthless _ .”

“And did you think I would lie to you? My love? My light, my liege, my own definition of beauty, did you think for a second that the gift was anything other than yourself? Come here — oh, darling, hush, let me hold you.” He wrapped Gerry in his arms, pressed him close and breathed, prayed that he would understand a fraction of the aching warmth in his chest. “Gerry.” Combing his fingers through Gerry’s hair, tracing the curve of his neck. “You are the only thing that matters. You are the  _ only  _ part of yourself that I love. I  _ love  _ you. Do you understand?”

“Not yet,” mumbled Gerry into his shoulder, and his tone was familiar, wry and sarcastic again, and Michael burst into laughter.

When his giggles subsided he pulled away a little, took Gerry’s face in both his hands. Raised an eyebrow, let his grin fall to something gentle and bright and deep with adoration, his voice to a murmur — “Well, my excellence, I can go on.” 

“Later,” breathed Gerry, eyes wide. His hands were gentle at Michael’s collar and he pulled him down — just a fraction, just enough to be an invitation. 

Michael rarely needed to be asked twice. 

There was much to consider. Gerry’s mind spoke in Mary’s voice and consigned him to worthlessness, if he could not bring what was asked of him and move to someone else’s dance. Michael spoke and was himself. For all his lies of omission and half-falsified smiles, he was easier to trust. 

So he could follow Michael and hope he’d be enough without the riches he spirited away from Mary’s back rooms and abandoned drawers. Or he could stay. She had a book in a high cabinet that wasn’t there, and Gerry had heard it not sing a high, yellow song that made his ears twist and itch like scabs about to open and bleed. She had been lying to him more often. She said he wouldn’t have to look in the book and he knew he would, and he knew it didn’t exist and there was a chance he wouldn’t either. She was gambling his life, and going with Michael would at least be a gamble he could control.

He left that night, surreptitious with a bag full of food and a single piece of fine white silk. Michael was sitting on the warehouse roof and lit up to see him, clambered down and caught his face in his hands and kissed his cheeks. The streetlight flickered.

“Goodbye,” Michael said into the empty room, standing at the door of the warehouse. The mattress lay uncovered in the corner and wax drippings still littered the floor. The candles were packed, mere stubs now, in an empty tin of salve.

“I’ve been in this city for a long time,” he mumbled as they left, taking Gerry’s arm and leaning on his shoulder.

“Are you sure you want to leave?”

Gerry watched him — his eyes were fixed ahead, memorizing the details of the street as they wandered down toward the harbor. He was smiling; he looked unguardedly happy.

“Yes,” he said.

Gerry didn’t know how to respond — there was nothing more to say, really. Michael made things uncomplicated when he wanted to. The wash of waves against the pilings grew louder and Michael tightened his hold on Gerry’s arm, just a little, just for a moment. 

“Where do you want to go?”   
“Pick somewhere for me,” said Gerry.

Michael grinned. “Would your lordship really accept the guidance of a —”

“Oh, hush.” But Gerry was holding back laughter, and Michael kissed the finger pressed to his lips and then caught at Gerry’s hand to kiss it properly, pressed a trail from his knuckles to his wrist, too purposeful, heavy and sweet. Gerry was caught off-guard. Enamored. Blushing, and Michael pressed a too-cold hand to his cheek.

They sat crosslegged on the dock and waited for the sun to rise, painting the water pink and gold, illuminating the fog that had drifted in during the night. Gerry was afraid. Michael was excited, though, and Michael’s moods had always been contagious.    
“That one,” Michael decided eventually, pointing to a sailing ship at the edge of the pier. 

“How much is passage?” asked Gerry, and Michael broke into disbelieving laughter.

“Oh — oh, no, my liege! Booking passage — my darling,” and he looked at Gerry with such adoration and such exasperation, “you don’t  _ book passage  _ anymore. Come, let me lead you to your first con.”   
And Gerry’s eyes were wide, though he didn’t know what else he should have expected. “Michael, I can pay —”

“And where, pray tell, would be the fun in that?”

Fair enough. His smile was infectious and he slung an arm around Gerry’s shoulders, walking him purposefully toward the ship. “Remember, Gerry, we were never meant to be anywhere else,” he said under his breath, and Gerry shot him a glance but thought he understood.

He didn’t say much. He liked watching Michael work, the flicker in his eyes and the dimpling of his face when he talked to the deckhand checking passengers. Gerry knew enough by now to follow him, the turns of phrase and carefully dropped questions that would lead him to a fistful of gold and a hand waving them through.

Michael ran at once for the railing, leaned out over the water and began rambling about what lay over the horizon — names and descriptions Gerry only half-believed were real, vivid and summer-bright and spun, laid out for him, painted over the water in the notes of Michael’s voice.

He looked back at the city more than once. The Von Closen house was still visible, rising dark and sticklike over the streets. He tried not to think about Mary waking to notice his absence, and when the ship cast off and the oars swung and the sails at last billowed with wind, he turned smiling to Michael instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Gerrymichael: *exists*  
> Me: you look like you need to run away together


End file.
